The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave

The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave

their cars, as told in today's Wall Street Journal, had me all choked up, but it's a fact of modern life more of us are going to have to get used to as gas prices, nearing $3/gallon even in Arizona, go up and up. Keep reading, but have some tissues handy:

quote:

Strangers on the Train:Highway Work ForcesChicagoans Off RoadCommuters Bemoan the LossOf Quality Time in Cars;Ms. Dennis Lugs In a CakeBy ILAN BRATApril 21, 2006; Page A1CHICAGO -- Ann Schue used to cherish the time she spent alone in her 2003 Ford Expedition during her 90-minute morning commute to her job at the University of Chicago. Nestled in heated leather seats, she planned her day while listening to the news.

Not anymore. Massive construction work on one of Chicago's main highways has forced her to trade the peace of her sport-utility vehicle for the clatter and crowds of a double-decker commuter train.

"This was a very, very big step for me," says Ms. Schue, 42 years old, who had never been on a train in her life before she recently started taking the Metra rail service. "I'm still very...," she says, choking up, then pausing to compose herself. "I miss my car."

Chicago is the rare Midwestern city with pervasive mass transit, including buses, elevated trains and regional commuter rail. But it's also typically Midwestern in that many residents so love their vehicles that they'd rather sit in traffic burning up $2.99-a-gallon gasoline than go near a bus stop or train platform.

The "Dan Ryan Dig" is changing that. Three weeks ago, two years of reconstruction began on the Dan Ryan Expressway, already the busiest road in Illinois and one of the busiest in the country. Each day on average, a total of more than 300,000 vehicles cram the 12-mile stretch of Interstates 90 and 94 that slides southward past downtown Chicago and veers toward northwest Indiana.

The Dan Ryan, which opened in 1962, was named after a late president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Workers are adding a lane to the expressway and redoing exit and entrance ramps to make them safer. With the work cutting the road's capacity by half, traffic at times has slowed from a crawl to a virtual standstill. Rush-hour travel times have increased by up to 30% on some days, says the Shadow Traffic news service, part of Westwood One Inc.

On Wednesday, a lunchtime fender bender blocked a lane for just 10 minutes or so -- and backed up traffic for five miles.

Other U.S. reconstruction projects have been larger when measured in monetary terms -- the largest was Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig," which replaced an elevated highway through downtown with a tunnel. The $600 million Dan Ryan project is one of the largest when measured by traffic disruption, traffic experts say.

In Chicago, thousands of commuters who have long endured jams on the highway have abandoned their cars and trucks for mass transit. Metra counted 2,000 new riders in the first week of reconstruction, up from the normal 35,000 people a day. The Chicago Transit Authority, which runs city buses and the elevated light-rail system known as the "El," has seen rush-hour ridership jump more than 20% on some train lines, a spokeswoman says.

The change for many of the new riders is wrenching. David Pettiford, 25, used to drive his Dodge Durango SUV 20 miles from his home in the south suburbs to his job at a truck-brokerage firm on Chicago's north side. Work on the Dan Ryan added up to 20 minutes to his usual one-hour commute. His wife made him switch to the Metra, which takes about an hour, because she was "sick of me complaining about the commute" and gas prices. "I would rather drive," he says.

Despite traffic and other hassles of driving to work, many car commuters consider their trip a guilty pleasure. "You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't do crack. [Driving] was my enjoyment for a little while" each day, says Frank Pierson, 52, who works at a bank in downtown Chicago.

Even though he lives just five blocks from an El stop, he had been driving to work and paying $18 a day to park. Facing the prospect of daily gridlock, he ditched his car. He likes to sit in a single seat toward the back of his train car because "nobody sits on top of you." One recent morning, two men walked past his seat peddling aromatic oils and candies. In a car, Mr. Pierson says, "you can roll the window up."

Taking the train is "a nightmare," says Mary Dennis, 49, a senior consultant with a mortgage bank in downtown Chicago. For about 20 years, she had been driving the 36 miles from her home in Schererville in northwest Indiana. The trip took about 45 minutes. But the Dan Ryan work stretched it to an hour, and gas prices kept climbing, so now she drives half an hour to Hammond, Ind., then rides a 40-minute South Shore train to a Chicago stop that's a 20-minute walk from her office.

She says she feels cramped on the train and has to dodge drips from Chicago station ceilings when it rains. She's not looking forward to Chicago's blazing summer heat in stuffy cars or waiting on the open platforms during the city's fierce winters. At first, she wore sneakers on the commute and switched to pumps at work. But now she wears black, thick-soled "old lady shoes." She has also traded her heavy briefcase for a cloth bag because she no longer has a back seat for storage.

Worst of all, as her office's "birthday lady" this year, Ms. Dennis must bring a cake whenever one of her 12 co-workers celebrates a birthday. One day she lugged a three-layer cake on the train and, by the time she reached her office, it was "almost as horizontal as it was vertical," she says. "But at least it tasted good."

Some South Shore regulars like Jack Sloan aren't so happy about the influx. He says the new commuters seem glued to cellphones, yammering as loudly as they would in the privacy of their cars. He wishes someone would put up "wallpaper or something" to block cellular signals. "You don't need to give your life story for everyone to hear," he says.

Stacy Long and three friends have been meeting on the 5:10 p.m. train to Indiana and sitting in the same seats for two years. Now their seats are rarely available. Ms. Long, at more than 6 feet 4, prefers a seat reserved for the elderly or handicapped when no one in those categories is using it. The other day, though, someone else had grabbed it before her.

"Now I have to sit all scrunched up," Ms. Long griped, her knees pressed against the seat in front of her. She also has had to start leaving her house 15 minutes earlier in the morning to find a parking spot at the train station. "That is not cool," she says.

Ms. Schue is still adapting to her commute from Homer Glen, Ill., to the University of Chicago, where she's an animal-health technician. Her first day on the train, she brought a big backpack filled with books "and just all kinds of crap," she says. Now she totes a small bag with "just the basics: Reader's Digest, wallet, lunch."

The switch to the train has even affected her weekends. She's been driving to a shopping mall 34 miles from her house instead of one six miles away. "I don't even know why," she says. "I just went just to go." And she's counting the days until the Dan Ryan work is done. Told that some drivers think congestion on the road isn't as bad as some had predicted, she says, "Really? Can I go back?"

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/22 00:09:13
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I was born and raised in Chicago. I love Chicago and will always consider myself a Chicagoan. Fortunately, I escaped to Wisconsin 26 years ago and have no regrets, with the exception of having to drive into the city any time after 5:00am on those very rare occasions. Traffic begins to back up from the Waukegan toll booth and once you hit Grand Avenue at Gurnee Mills, forget about it. On the weekends, north bound traffic from the city into Wisconsin is a parking lot, especially during the summer months. If I were living in Illinois and working in the city, I'd be as happy as hell to take the train. I'm not going to let the rising price of gas rain on my parade. I simply park the Land Cruiser in favor of the Miata. Warm weather means "top down" high speed driving on two lane county roads.

CSD

Born in ChicagoEscaped to WisconsinSelling Vienna Beef hot dogs and Polish

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/22 07:21:13
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Warm weather means "top down" high speed driving on two lane county roads.

CSD

Born in ChicagoEscaped to WisconsinSelling Vienna Beef hot dogs and Polish

Goodluck finding a "two lane" road with no traffic, I live 45 miles west of the city where our farm fields are exploding with houses. You'd be lucky to find decent farm country in DeKalb and beyond. I read projections once that the "metro" area will someday run to Rochelle, it way not be growing as rapid straight west but it is swallowing up the farmland of Plano, Sandwich, Yorkville and Oswego in rapid order. The train here just extended it's commuter runs 9 miles west to Elburn and Wasco.

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/22 15:47:05
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two lane road with no traffic? come to loxahatchee florida you can lay down in the road and not get hit and when i was a kid we would go to wisconsin house via hunt club road, today i bet its busier though

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/22 17:31:40
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quote:

Originally posted by phatphil

two lane road with no traffic? come to loxahatchee florida you can lay down in the road and not get hit and when i was a kid we would go to wisconsin house via hunt club road, today i bet its busier though

IIRC, part of Humt Club Rd. is near Gurnee Mills Mall so it would definately be busy.

Parking can be a nightmare here. Taking public transportation is the way to go when we see the Cubs. Unless we really need the car for large shopping trips, walking or pt makes more sense.

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/24 08:38:05
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quote:

Originally posted by bill voss

What used to be grown in those fields?

This is all prime corn/soybeans land. I have worked in civil engineering for about 30 years, one of the major accepted practices here is called "mass grading" which means ALL of the black dirt is stripped off, the clay pushed around into building pads and about 6" of black dirt is replaced for lawn and tree "growth". Our recently built super Wal-Mart decided to build in a lovely wetland that they partly mitigated, built a huge stone wall to support their structure and still wound up with a building roof line a good 20 feet BELOW the natural grade and the exisiting highway. A fete of engineering, yes, a maximum fete of ugliness, you bet. And then there was the giant mound of black dirt they sold off.

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/24 09:11:24
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quote:

Originally posted by kland01s

quote:

Originally posted by bill voss

What used to be grown in those fields?

This is all prime corn/soybeans land. I have worked in civil engineering for about 30 years, one of the major accepted practices here is called "mass grading" which means ALL of the black dirt is stripped off, the clay pushed around into building pads and about 6" of black dirt is replaced for lawn and tree "growth". Our recently built super Wal-Mart decided to build in a lovely wetland that they partly mitigated, built a huge stone wall to support their structure and still wound up with a building roof line a good 20 feet BELOW the natural grade and the exisiting highway. A fete of engineering, yes, a maximum fete of ugliness, you bet. And then there was the giant mound of black dirt they sold off.

On a larger level, I was thinking of where those displaced crops would be grown, or if they would be grown. What costs (value?) will come to the rest of us from this sequence that seems to be repeated endlessly. I took a quiz(I'll find it) that shows how many earths (and it's resources) our lifestyle consumes. Most of the environmental food costs were asssociated with the distance and energy used to grow and transport from field to table. Grapes from Chile are not cheap, even though they seem to be, for instance. Our food is not locally grown and consumed anymore and we are paying a price.

RE: The trajedy of Chicagoans having to leave2006/04/24 10:57:14
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quote:

Originally posted by kland01s

Warm weather means "top down" high speed driving on two lane county roads.

CSD

Born in ChicagoEscaped to WisconsinSelling Vienna Beef hot dogs and Polish

Goodluck finding a "two lane" road with no traffic, I live 45 miles west of the city where our farm fields are exploding with houses. You'd be lucky to find decent farm country in DeKalb and beyond. I read projections once that the "metro" area will someday run to Rochelle, it way not be growing as rapid straight west but it is swallowing up the farmland of Plano, Sandwich, Yorkville and Oswego in rapid order. The train here just extended it's commuter runs 9 miles west to Elburn and Wasco.

Two lane road with no traffic? Come here to the land of enchantment, New Mexico, in fact, especially here in southern New Mexico. Once you get outside of Las Cruces, you can go miles without seeing another dwelling, much less a car.